The Merits of ‘New’ Media; or You Should Be Reading, Like, Everything.
“Media is language. Language is humanity. To box yourself off from one or the other is to shrink the world you live in.”
by Jamie Caron
A few months ago, I was treating myself to a walk through a local bookstore I like to visit every now and again. For someone like me, who grew up in the solitude of his own room reading all day, there’s something comforting about the gentle crushing sensation that accompanies the tight shelves of a narrow bookstore.
Having already passed up several volumes of Shakespeare and one particularly dense collection of Bradbury (that I inevitably returned for), I meandered my way to the musty back corners where some of the less bookish books were kept—Star Trek novels, illustrated The Lord of the Rings companions triple my age, and the small, off-white shelf that contained most of the store’s supply of graphic novels. Having recently heard the name in a YouTube video, I thumbed through a copy of Scott McCloud’s 1993 Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. I read a page here, a page there until a point was made that caught my eye, and I will paraphrase that point here:
“Human beings have been using text and images, individually, to communicate for centuries. These methods of information transfer are considered the zenith of human achievement: Shakespeare is a global name. The Mona Lisa draws millions of people each year, each month. Why, then, are comics (strips, books, graphic novels) relegated to the playpen of youth? Why, in popular consciousness, is there such an idea that the combination of the written word and the visual image is a debasement, rather than an elevation?”
That thought was a lot to chew on—I had had similar musings in the past. I’d always been something of a mediaphile; my childhood was overcrowded with YA novels, my college major was centered in creative writing, and one of my two minors was dedicated to film and media studies, where I had first been introduced to comics as an art form (and if studying EC Comics isn’t an introduction, what is?). I had been curious about the place of comics (and other media, like movies, video games, etc.) in lower levels of education, like high school, for a long time. Clearly, there was something there, and it wasn’t like middle schoolers grew out of picture books because of the images—it was because of the text’s low lexile level. So what was the deal? What were the merits? Why was this not being taught when it all had so much to give?
When I consider that question, my thoughts go to my father, a man whose general media interests begin in 1972 with The Godfather and end in 1994 with The Shawshank Redemption—to him, born in 1962, comics are the tripe that came directly from 30’s pulps and video games are Asteroids. Just Asteroids. I’ve tried to play other video games with him before; several years ago I tried to teach him how to use a joystick through the narrative co-op game A Way Out (2018). I was hoping for the kind of upbeat-yet-sobering experience I had playing the game with my best friend, watching two convicts struggle to escape prison and revenge themselves on the man who wronged them, piloted by our discerning hands. What I actually saw was my father walking into walls, failing to control a camera in a 3D environment, and his slow, disbelieving bewilderment at how many buttons are on a video game controller these days (it’s about 16). My revelation came at that moment, my father staring at a blank screen as he walked his virtual avatar into the corner of the prison yard and couldn’t get out—This is a whole new language to him.
People, naturally, are afraid of what they don’t understand—an evolutionary holdover from our time as something less than ourselves. It’s the reason, for instance, that you don’t see many illiterate or functionally illiterate people chomping at the bit to read books - it’s scary. I see this type of hesitancy in my classroom all the time. But reading is a skill that needs to be taught explicitly—it’s not a skill we’re born with, like speech. Like speech, however, reading (or any other skill that enables us to communicate with others) is best learned very young, so that it imprints firmly on the brain. For many English educators, the time has long since passed them by so that imprinting a new language, like working an Xbox controller or reading a graphic novel, is easy. And like all things difficult, we are hesitant to undergo them, but we also know that those things are often the most rewarding.
Media Is Language. Language Is Humanity.
Thus, we arrive at my ELA classroom at Wye River, where comic books adorn my shelves, film posters mount my walls, where quotes from Final Fantasy VIII and Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty rest neatly in picture frames above my whiteboard, where I teach my students to read comics about the Silver Surfer alongside the American greats like Steinbeck and Bradbury, and where I say that a game you play on your TV can have the same emotional impact as Shakespeare, because something written in English is worth no less than something written in Spanish. Just like language, the purpose of all media is communication; it is a tool humans have devised to better their understanding of one another. The more languages you know, the more people you can interact with and the more ideas you can communicate. Is that not the heart of the English educational experience—to know and learn and question?
For students at Wye River, examining literature through, say, the gutter of a comic panel (that’s the name for the white space that often divides sequential images from each other) and the tension it creates through the distortion of time can open the door for them to ask questions about suspense in novels and how authors create it through word choice and connotation. One language allows access to another, much like knowing Latin can help you learn Spanish—the patterns and etymology are similar, but you might not know that until you explore each one. One skill builds upon another. Media is language. Language is humanity. To box yourself off from one or the other is to shrink the world you live in. With our world, which continues to expand, how could you ever be content with not wanting to know more?
My advice to those who have read this far is this: the next time you see a piece a media you would normally dismiss—a poster for a film that catches your eye, a conversation between your child and their friend about a video game that has their sclera bloodshot and their hands creaking, or a comic book that reminds you of your childhood, set aside your fear. Embrace it. Read it. Learn a new language. Plunge into the intrigue. The world will thank you for it.
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